@Micke: I had a feeling you were trying to prove a point and all I can say it's unfortunate if you don't appreciate the effort done with this thread. I guess it's your choice if you'd rather focus on other aspects of the game.

@Micke: I had a feeling you were trying to prove a point and all I can say it's unfortunate if you don't appreciate the effort done with this thread. I guess it's your choice if you'd rather focus on other aspects of the game.

Hah no, the thread is fine because it contains more than just the old boring haste vs mastery debate, the hit/aoe+haste and the plateau sections are good things to discuss, also to quote you:

"What I think we should do now is to try make assupmtions backed up by logic rather than proven by statistics (which we don't have a good source for) that we all should follow for now and use to tell other people how Affliction works. Mainly so we can help lesser experienced players with their gearing and how to behave in a raid. This should of course be done to help everyone, no matter what level they play at, but it's probably bad if we stubbornly stick to said theories when it's obvious we have a long way to go to figure out this spec. When it comes to real min/maxing we need to be able to prove that something is right before we can fully support it and of course utilize it afterwards."

which I strongly agree with and is in fact the only "point" I am trying to prove (or rather echo)

I read Micke's original post as a way to decrease variance. It means you will never get highest over optimal, but you won't get lowest either. You are basically shooting for least variance. We assume keep Mastery and Haste close throughout and don't stack one over the other. With that in mind are there enough fights that would be so bad for mastery or haste that having a little too much of the wrong one be detrimental enough to justify gemming int when it's rated lower? It's definately food for thought considering int for gemming purposes isn't much lower. Even if you completely regemmed Int to accomplish this though, is the difference even impacting or beyond the margin of error? My experience with simcraft thus far has shown me that unless you really stack one stat over another there really isn't much of a difference in results.

How do you min/max when you can't be certain of the stat values to begin with?

On the subject of simulation accuracy and stat weights (Haste v. Mastery v. Int): while SimC may not have accurate weightings, most APL changes would increase our theoretical DPS by increasing the uptime of dots applied under dynamic bonuses like tailoring cloaks, engineering gloves, trinkets, and DS:M, right? And since *most* of these either provide intellect (raising the value of haste and mastery) or scale with stats (haste), int is unlikely to see drastic increases in stat weighting, where mastery, and particularly haste, are likely to gain value compared to simulations. This is, of course, assuming that for the not-perfect APL, the mechanical testing is the one being used in game, but it seems really darn close to me, comparing logs to results.

This would seem to indicate that once int is at the bottom of the list on the sims (2x haste <=> 2x mastery >> 1x Int), only haste and mastery are at risk of being undervalued, and will remain above int regardless of APL accuracy.

If anything, given the risen power of haste on AoE fights, the "compromise" to offer to geared warlocks first poking their head at theory would be to have them gem and reforge for haste until it falls behind.

I appreciate your effort, but in my oppinion your post severely lacks justifications. Might be that I am a little bit too fixated on them due to my university background, but whenever someone makes some sort of assertion (that is not readily apparent to everyone) I automatically want to know "why?", "based on what data?". Most of the time you just say stuff with some weak justification but don't provide any tangible evidence.

Originally Posted by Bonkura

Hit cap: Stick to either 12% or 15% (4080/(5100 rating)
Because most of our damage comes from dots, reaching hit cap doesn't become that important since we can only miss dot applications and not dot ticks. It's hard to say what hit rating we should go for, especially when it depends on how if affects you in a raid environment. Since the start of the expansion I've been a firm believer in staying at 12% hit (4080 rating) so we won't lose damage by missing when there's adds who are usually at level 92 (mainly these have to die asap so it will harm your raid to expose it to the RNG of having unreliable damage here). 12% also seems like a comfortable level for boss level mobs because it doesn't give us that crazy RNG and also should give us enough time to react to misses. By going lower we're more likely to get chain misses which can screw us over greatly. The only reason you should ever go for 15% hit is if you have a hard time to react to misses because you are struggling with the rotation as it is and/or the fight mechanics are overwhelming and you need to be able to focus on them.

I disagree. Most Warlocks I happen to check out every once in a while have somewhere between 14% and 15% Hit (for example alltheWarlocksinmyguild, Sparkuggz-Method, Varia-Method, Shinafae-Blood Legion, Shaddows-Blood Legion...). While it is true DoT-Ticks can not miss, missing a refresh on Agony might cause it to fall off dropping all stacks (if you are refreshing a strong Agony as late as possible) and missing a Haunt still costs you a Shard. And even if it is not a Worst-Case-Scenario and you "just" miss a normal refresh or an Malefic Grasp it will take you some time to react to that miss, no matter how good you are. I personally can't play with more than 1% miss chance and am really annoyed by any miss, so I opted to go for 15% Hit.

Originally Posted by Bonkura

Secondary stats scaling: Mastery = Haste > Crit
Backed up by SimCraft we are able to tell that Crit isn't that great for us and should be avoided as much as possible. After that SimCraft also tells us that if we get Mastery or Haste too far from eachother we will start losing DPS. This is because these two stats scale synergistically. More mastery gives us more damage and more haste lets us deal this damage more often. We are not seeing this because haste plateaus but because Malefic Grasp and Drain Soul gives us extra ticks/damge from our dots and if these abilities channel faster we simply do more damage. Because of this we will always aim for keeping both values at a similar level. SimCraft seems to usually suggest mastery should be slightly higher, so we pick that stat when we can't keep them both completely even.

I agree in general, but secondary stat scaling is a difficult topic and especially in this expansion. This warrants its very own discussion, but I don't think this is the place for such a discussion.

Originally Posted by Bonkura

Pandemic makes haste plateaus (almost) irrelevant
We have been able to figure out that because of Pandemic we will almost always try to refresh our dots when they have 50% or slightly less left of their durations. This allows us to spend less time applying dots and get a higher uptime of MG/DS. Also because of this we will rarely get all ticks from our dots so the haste plateaus in reality become broader. I guess we can probably say that we in general need 2 extra ticks from a dot to reach next plateau. However, since we don't always aim to refresh dots at the same duration left because we can buff the dots with procs/CDs we can safely say that on a single target fight there is no reason to ever care about haste plateaus (maybe on a perfect rotation Patchwerk fight style, but we're probably never gonna be able to do that seeing how slow we are at figuring out this spec). Some might suggest that if we try get the longest possible duration on our dots we could try put us close to haste plateaus. This we can ignore with the argument that a shorter base duration makes the dot tick faster (which we could get from a higher MG uptime of course, but as of now we should ignore playing around with base durations because it's simply too complex to handle atm).

No. All Pandemic does is give us a greater window to refresh our DoTs (and a free tick actually). Say you have a 30 second DoT that ticks every 2 seconds (we don't have such a DoT but it makes for easier numbers):

All in all, with or without Pandemic we gain about the same amount of refreshes. So no, haste plateaus are still as important as they always were, even more so for multitarget fights.

Originally Posted by Bonkura

On some multiple target fights haste pulls ahead of mastery
This becomes true if we will spend a lot of time casting Seed of Corruption. On a fight like Wind Lord in HoF we want to focus on haste over mastery because so much of our damage comes from SoC, which has a cast time and is not affected by mastery. Note that the times we will drop mastery for haste are under extreme circumstances. A lot of theorycrafting has to be done to tell at what point haste actually starts to pull ahead. On fights where we use SoC but under shorter periods you should stick to your normal stat priorities (Elegon, Amber-Shaper, Grand Empress and Tsulong being some examples for this tier).

I disagree on multiple levels. First off, on Wind Lord-H SoC is only about 5%-6% of the overall damage (see this parse for example) and even on Wind Lord-N SoC is only about 15% of the overall damage (see this parse for example).
Second, for a theoretic pure SoC fight (in which we do not use any of our DoTs), I would assume that Int pulls ahead of any secondary stat. I actually do not have any numbers to back this claim up, but seeing as you do not provide any to support your claim I don't see why I would do the math on this. The discussion is kind of mute, because in a mostly AoE-fight Demonology would pull miles ahead of Affliction (as can be seen in the Wind Lord N rankings).

Originally Posted by Bonkura

The only meaningful haste plateaus (in T14) should be 4717 and 6637
In theory we don't support haste plateaus, however since we haven't been able to prove for sure that we should ignore them I'd still recommend trying to grab some of them. Most of us have been focusing on the 4717 and 6637 ratings. At 4717 haste rating we get an extra tick of Corruption, which can prove useful at multiple target fights where we use SoC but can't refresh Corruption on all targets before they expire and also because it's our go to dot if we would ever apply something manually since Agony has a rampup time and UA a cast time. The 6637 haste rating gives us next ticks of Agony and Unstable Affliction, which will be supported with the same reasoning that on multiple target fights we mightl apply them but not always refresh them before they expire. By using above arguments we can support grabbing these haste values when you are close enough to them to not have to sacrifice too much mastery (what exactly this means is hard to estimate, but I figure we need to make sure to not have more than around 500-600 more haste than mastery to comfortably grab these haste plateaus).

As shown above, the plateaus are still as important as ever, so I obviously disagree with this point. However, some breakpoints are in fact more important than others: If you get an additional tick of a DoT while under the effect of both Heroism/Bloodlust and Dark Soul, the DPS gain will obviously be smaller than when you get an additional tick under just Heroism or Dark Soul just because you only have Heroism and Dark Soul once per 10 minutes. In addition to that, you want additional ticks of DoTs you want to have on the mob for as long as possible and not for ones which you will override with stronger ones before they expire anyway. I would therefore argue that additional ticks with either DS or Hero up are the most important ones, but again, I do not have any data to back this up.

Originally Posted by Bonkura

Gems: Go for pure Haste/Mastery gems when SimCraft says 2x of these are worth more than 1x Intellect but grab all socket bonuses
At some point, usually around 480 item level, you will start gemming out of Intellect. How I think you should approach whether to put a full Haste or full Mastery gem in or not is to remove all your reforging and what you gain from gems, then by the gems you put in try get both stats even. I haven't yet seen any piece where not grabbing the socket bonus hasn't been worth it so keep focus on them. Look at reforging as the final tuning of your gear when everything else has been taken care of. You might be able to maintain slightly more optimal values with other methods, but if you do you probably don't need help with this in the first place and noone is going to call you out on being wrong without proving it so this is purely a guideline.

List of all gems we can consider using: 320 Haste, 320 Mastery, 160 Hit/160 Mastery, 160 Hit/160 Haste, 80 Int/160 Haste & 80 Int/160 Mastery. (Hit becomes neglible at some point, but we should still be able to reforge out of the Hit we don't need so the stats won't get wasted)

So basically what you are saying is "gem for what is mathematically the best", which is, while correct, not a terribly new idea. The only interesting point you bring up with Int vs Mastery. My (purely anecdotal) experience was, that once I dropped my ilvl 463 weapon and replaced it with an ilvl 502 one, Mastery was better than Int. I therefore suspect that this point is tied to the amount of Spellpower/Int you already have, which would make sense because more Spellpower makes Mastery a better stat.

I appreciate your effort, but in my oppinion your post severely lacks justifications. Might be that I am a little bit too fixated on them due to my university background, but whenever someone makes some sort of assertion (that is not readily apparent to everyone) I automatically want to know "why?", "based on what data?". Most of the time you just say stuff with some weak justification but don't provide any tangible evidence.

The OP isn't meant to be a guide. I posted ideas that this community have discussed and seemed like something that have been accepted yet not confirmed (some do reflect my personal views, but I didn't come to the conclusions alone). Your post is exactly what I was looking for as response.

I'm going to go through all replies and try respond to what I can while I also edit the first post. I want to use it to reflect everyone's opinions to keep the discussion here organized. It will probably take a couple of days before it's done though but please keep posting your ideas/opinions if you have any meanwhile.

I appreciate that you wrote out a guide that warlocks can follow, but there are a couple things that I don't agree with. The biggest one being the hit cap.

There was a lot of confusion with people bringing up top warlocks not being at the hit cap at the beginning of the tier but with Exp and Exp gems not showing up on the armory and Orc's having the wand off Elegon, it looked like they weren't capped but in actuality they were. The hit cap is still very, very important.

You could also list the 160 Exp & 160 Mastery gem and completely get rid of any +80 Intellect gem's on the list when you hit the point where Int isn't worth going for anymore with gemming. Unless you are a JC with the 320 Int gems.

The 4717 plateau is great to go for because at the beginning of your gearing (465 ilvlish), haste will be better than mastery regardless until you get into higher ilvls. The 4717 cap is just an added bonus. 6637 is a little more important because you are including two plateaus. After you reach 6637 then it's best to synergies the two stats together indefinitely for t14.

I'm going to try work out a way to prove for you all that hit capping is pointless even during progression. The RNG or QoL or whatever reasons you bring up to going for full cap still doesn't justify wasting more than 1000 secondary stats to reach it. I'm very certain about this. I just need the math/stats to back it up.

I will reword that paragraph though and bring up that many people argue that hit cap is the way to go, especially considering many top Warlocks go for it.

Eventually we will all most likely get that cap so it might not be worth the effort to argue this. With better gear it won't be so expensive and I think already in full BiS this tier we can comfortably take it. Tbh this was more of an issue back in MSV when MoP had just been released.

Btw, what gems do you suggest we put in red sockets if not Int hybrids? Exp+Haste/Mastery?

Gemming Hit (and Expertise is just that) is another tricky topic. See, you are not actually trading Int for Hit but you are trading Int for some other secondary stat (assuming you can reach the Hitcap without the specific gem). For example, assume you have only 1 item, which has 1 gem slot, any socket bonus that is worthwhile and 400 Crit/400 Mastery and the Hitcap is 160:
- use 80Int/160 Mastery=> reforge crit into Hit and you have 80 Int, 260 Crit, 560 Mastery, 160 Hit
- use 160Hit/160 Mastery=> reforge crit into Haste and you have 160 Haste, 260 Crit, 560 Mastery, 160 Hit
You just traded 80 Int for 160 Crit, which is probably a bad deal. If all your secondary stats are worth at least 0.5 times Int, this will be a win in any situation, but Crit will probably never be that good. Unfortunatelly, with the number of items and thereby possible reforge combinations, it is not as easy as it is in my scenario. You would probably need to have some optimizer tool run both options and then manually compare those. If you are not willing to do this, I would argue to not socket Expertise/Mastery.

So whats your reasoning behind not hit capping? If you are so sure, you must have thought about it? If I would try and argue a case that a lot of the top warlocks do differently, I would not even try to argue "gut feeling"...

I'm going to try work out a way to prove for you all that hit capping is pointless even during progression. The RNG or QoL or whatever reasons you bring up to going for full cap still doesn't justify wasting more than 1000 secondary stats to reach it. I'm very certain about this. I just need the math/stats to back it up.

You can start by giving the difference between a hit-capped sim and a non-hit cap sim.

So according to these numbers, even if you are able to completely trade Hit for Mastery (which you most likely won't be), you deal more DPS with 15% Hit. I don't mean to bash you, but I just dislike people making statements, flagging them as facts and not backing them up.

personally, i would always go for hitcap coz i dont like to miss, but i also know that it is a personal preference to go for hitcap or not. i dont quite trust the SimC reports that SirFLipper have brought(like i dont trust any simc report linked, prefer to focus on my own results and start from there) coz i dont know the exact setup, as for all i know, he could be doctoring his results to prove his point that hitcap is the way to go, when every1 else get the result that not going hitcap is slightly better than hitcap, myself included even if it is only slightly, it seems a bit sketchy to me. All i know is that im going for hitcap, no matter what simcraft says, whether it says its a dps buff or dps nerf, ill go for it since it is a personal preference but i also strongly disagree with Bonkura's reasoning for not going hitcap, as it is a very narrowminded reasoning for not going hitcap.

I'm going to try work out a way to prove for you all that hit capping is pointless even during progression. The RNG or QoL or whatever reasons you bring up to going for full cap still doesn't justify wasting more than 1000 secondary stats to reach it. I'm very certain about this. I just need the math/stats to back it up.

I will reword that paragraph though and bring up that many people argue that hit cap is the way to go, especially considering many top Warlocks go for it.

Eventually we will all most likely get that cap so it might not be worth the effort to argue this. With better gear it won't be so expensive and I think already in full BiS this tier we can comfortably take it. Tbh this was more of an issue back in MSV when MoP had just been released.

Btw, what gems do you suggest we put in red sockets if not Int hybrids? Exp+Haste/Mastery?

I've brought it up before in past discussions so in a nut shell I will say this. Missing one Haunt, especially in a period where you are running highly modified DoTs, under Hero/Lust is a terrible damaging loss. It's damage lost from preemptively setting up a good line to spam MG's and take full advantage of the time these DoTs are up, especially in a period where you are required to do burst damage. Also missing that haunt will bring up a cascading problem. Forcing you to lose 4-5 seconds of mega dot damage, possibly lose the extra damage from a Haunt that might of landed a critical strike, decrease your chances of Nightfall procs and miss your chance to roll Haunts. Another example would be re-casting a DoT with 1 second left on your trinket buff. With out the hit cap, for instance at the pull, typically your Jade Spirit, DMC trinket proc and Lightweave will end at the same time and be the first of your 6-7 buffs to fall off. With the hit cap you can do a SB:SS with 1 second left with these procs and continue to roll for high amounts of damage while quickly procing Nightfall for more Haunts.

Another great thing about being hit capped is you can focus on more important aspects of the fight like...actually paying attention to the encounter. Yes I have good reflexes but I don't want to worry about recasting something when I've already moved onto something else and I have to go back and recast. Chance are because I have moved on I might miss what just happened. Sure it might be easy to recast if you are focusing on 1-4 targets but when you have to worry about 5+ targets, staying alive, moving, etc you just missed recasting that agony, losing your 10 stack and screwing yourself. There is a lot to worry about when you want to max out your damage and having to double check shit is just stupid. When people look at sims for hit capped vs not hit capped it's usually a tank and spank fight, and spamming a single target rotation. The computer isn't making a mistake and it's still only a 200-300 dps increase. Add in human error and a scenario that is completely different from anything you could ever create out of simcrafting and you are losing thousands of damage not being hit capped.

Originally Posted by SirFlipper

Gemming Hit (and Expertise is just that) is another tricky topic. See, you are not actually trading Int for Hit but you are trading Int for some other secondary stat (assuming you can reach the Hitcap without the specific gem). For example, assume you have only 1 item, which has 1 gem slot, any socket bonus that is worthwhile and 400 Crit/400 Mastery and the Hitcap is 160:
- use 80Int/160 Mastery=> reforge crit into Hit and you have 80 Int, 260 Crit, 560 Mastery, 160 Hit
- use 160Hit/160 Mastery=> reforge crit into Haste and you have 160 Haste, 260 Crit, 560 Mastery, 160 Hit
You just traded 80 Int for 160 Crit, which is probably a bad deal. If all your secondary stats are worth at least 0.5 times Int, this will be a win in any situation, but Crit will probably never be that good. Unfortunatelly, with the number of items and thereby possible reforge combinations, it is not as easy as it is in my scenario. You would probably need to have some optimizer tool run both options and then manually compare those. If you are not willing to do this, I would argue to not socket Expertise/Mastery.

So whats your reasoning behind not hit capping? If you are so sure, you must have thought about it? If I would try and argue a case that a lot of the top warlocks do differently, I would not even try to argue "gut feeling"...

Not really a tricky topic, rather simple in fact. As long as you aren't being force to reforge to crit then idk how Int would ever be better. Haste and Mastery are pretty much equal partners past 482 ilvl, hit never loses it's value until you are hit capped and Int never raises in value to pass mastery and haste. Replacing 80 int with 160 hit basically leaves you more room to add more haste and mastery. Instead of reforging out of 160 mastery to make room for 160 hit, you just added 160 more mastery to your stat sheet using that 160 hit 160 mastery gem. Just pretend that "red" gem slot is actually blue and you wouldn't think twice about putting in that 160 hit 160 mastery gem. Just pretend that Hit (Expertise), Mastery, and Haste are all equal partners right around 482 ilvl. Lower ilvl's things change between haste, mastery and Int but the value of Hit never changes regardless whether sim tells you so or not.

People on these forums remind me of guys who think computers will win the game of baseball.

Tbh I didn't even know there's orange Exp+Mastery/Haste gems. If I knew they even existed I would've thought they were green.

Originally Posted by voidspark

You can start by giving the difference between a hit-capped sim and a non-hit cap sim.

If we decide to trust the current APL I'd probably do something like use 3 different gear lists (~475 ilvl, ~495 ilvl and T14 BiS) and then run them with either 12% or 15% hit in 3 different fight styles (Patchwerk, Light & Heavy movement), with different refresh times on dots (like w/ ~1.5-2.5 ticks left and the current model) and at least 50K iterations. This is the best way I can come up with but it would take some time to finish and I need to update this thread among other things first. =P

So according to these numbers, even if you are able to completely trade Hit for Mastery (which you most likely won't be), you deal more DPS with 15% Hit. I don't mean to bash you, but I just dislike people making statements, flagging them as facts and not backing them up.

That's interesting. I can see that you are in almost full BiS so it supports my theory abougt hitcapping when we get there.

Edit: I see 15.02% spell hit for both profiles. You changed haste to mastery.

Originally Posted by Palmz

People on these forums remind me of guys who think computers will win the game of baseball.

Kinda funny parallel since I'm using my experience from playing the game more than anything here.

Just a quick input here about hitcap. This is only valid IF it´s valued below mastery and haste and is atleast why i choose to go for it. If it´s valued above it´s a nobrainer.

Running with hitcap gives you the opportunity to refresh dots just before they run out, this is especially important with agony. If you choose to go with 12% hit I would never dare to wait for the last tick, possibly second to last just because of the risk of a miss. Running with hitcap makes it safe to do that refresh at the latest possible moment. Probably isn´t a bit dmg increase but it´s a quality of life upgrade and probably a minor dps upgrade since it makes it easier to get full usage of supercharged dots, especially when you want full MG channeltime during haunts.

This is afaik not something that simcraft is modelling correctly under the current APL

If I understand the SimCraft APL correctly it's just spamming Haunt with no more reason than to keep the debuff up. This should be easy to fix for someone who's been working with their APL's before. Just set it to have at least 8s left of all dots including travel time and it's a big improvement to what we have now.

This is a playstyle choice. If you can react well to misses you will squeeze more dps being under hitcap but it is not a substantial margin.

Secondary stats scaling: Mastery = Haste > Crit

Can't really argue with this one. Every spec has the stats it likes and this is affliction's.

Pandemic makes haste plateaus (almost) irrelevant

Pandemic just makes plateaus have the opposite affect than they did. The highest dps point in terms of dot ticks/second is 1 point short of a haste plateau. Because of Pandemic we would only use extra ticks when we would want to let dots run as long as possible. This being when you have a set up with the most buffs on them.

On some multiple target fights haste pulls ahead of mastery

On Windlord if you are CCing you are hitting at most 6 targets. This is not enough targets to make Seed spamming effective. At that point it is the highest dps to pick 3 targets and focus on them. If you have 1 of each pack available use those and you will do the most effective dps.

The only meaningful haste plateaus (in T14) should be 4717 and 6637

Extra ticks of Agony mean nothing as if you let Agony fall off you made a mistake.

Gems: Go for pure Haste/Mastery gems when SimCraft says 2x of these are worth more than 1x Intellect but grab all socket bonuses

I tend to gem this way but I don't always go for socket bonuses. For example a blue socket is not worth going for the bonus if the bonus is something like 60crit. I don't remember what item it is but I had it at one point.

So under ideal circumstances (trade Hit for Mastery, low world lag, elite player that always makes the correct decision, 0.5s miss reaction time) it is a 300 DPS gain to drop 3% Hit on average. However, you have a lower minimum DPS and a higher DPS range, which for me spells out "don't do this at home".

First of all I am new to playing affliction and find the discussion in this thread to be incredibly useful and also completely epeen free, which is nice when you are trying to achieve constructive threads

I am also glad that there is a topic with this level of discussion as something I have found annoying is what seems to be a lack or good resources (compared to some other classes I have played) on the usual raiding sites when it comes to warlocks right now.

Originally Posted by Harsesis

On Windlord if you are CCing you are hitting at most 6 targets. This is not enough targets to make Seed spamming effective. At that point it is the highest dps to pick 3 targets and focus on them. If you have 1 of each pack available use those and you will do the most effective dps.

Slightly off-topic, but do you have some data or other resource that discusses optimal practices when multi dotting? I haven't seen anything that gives a clear explanation as to SB:SS vs Haunt dps and whether or not you should be manually refreshing dots without SS available, mainly agony. Don't want to derail the thread so feel free to PM if anyone has good info on this, thanks.